The problem of evil and the suffering of creeping things

Crummett, Dustin

doi:10.1007/s11153-017-9619-0

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…As indicated above, this limited scope of classical theodicies has been responded to by the development of new accounts that explicitly claim to include animals (e.g., Murray 2008;Moritz 2014;Aguti 2017;Dougherty 2014;Crummett 2017). There are a number of suggestions as to why, from a theistic perspective, an eschatological perspective including animals (or at least more complex types of animals) should be welcomed (e.g., section III in Hereth and Timpe 2020).…”

Section: Animal Suffering and Theismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal Suffering, God and Lessons from the Book of Job

Gasser

2021

Religions

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Nature shows itself to us in ambivalent ways. Breathtaking beauty and cruelty lie close together. A Darwinian image of nature seems to imply that nature is a mere place of violence, cruelty and mercilessness. In this article, I first explore the question of whether such an interpretation of nature is not one-sided by being phrased in overly moral terms. Then, I outline how the problem of animal suffering relates to a specific understanding of God as moral agent. Finally, in the main part of the argumentation, I pursue the question to what extent the problem of animal (and human) suffering does not arise for a concept of God couched in less personalistic terms. If God’s perspective towards creation is rather de-anthropocentric, then moral concerns might be of less importance as we generally assume. Such an understanding of the divine is by no means alien to the biblical-theistic tradition. I argue that it finds strong echoes in the divine speeches in the Book of Job: They aim at teaching us to accept both the beauty and the tragic of existence in a creation that seen in its entirety is rather a-moral. Finally, I address the question what such a concept of God could mean for our existence.

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Section: Animal Suffering and Theismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal Suffering, God and Lessons from the Book of Job

Gasser

2021

Religions

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“…The theist then can plausibly claim that the distribution of suffering among sentient beings is the work of God only if the demands of biological success and "some unknown justifying moral goal happen to coincide in such a way that each could be simultaneously satisfied. Such a coincidence is (to say the least) antecedently far from certain" (Draper 2008, p. 215;Crummett 2017). Since this happy accident is at least prima facie highly unlikely and naturalism requires no such coincidence, we have good reason to accept Draper's (6).…”

Section: Theism Naturalism and The Distribution Of Painmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of Suffering, Epiphenomenalism, and the Phenomena of Life: Evidential Problems for Naturalists

Madden¹

2021

Religions

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Paul Draper argues that the central issue in the debate over the problem of suffering is not whether the theist can offer a probable explanation of suffering, but whether theism or naturalism can give a better explanation for the facts regarding the distribution of pain as we find them. He likewise maintains a comparison of relative probabilities considering the facts of suffering; atheological naturalism is to be preferred. This essay proceeds in two phases: (a) It will be argued that mainstream positions in naturalistic philosophy of mind make it difficult to take pain as anything but epiphenomenal and therefore not subject to evolutionary explanation. While the distribution of suffering is a difficulty for the theist, the naturalist has equal difficulty explaining the fact that there is any suffering at all in the first place. Thus, the facts of suffering offer no advantage to the atheist. (b) Phenomenologists suggest that there is an intrinsic connection between animal life, pain, and normativity (including a summum bonum). The mere occurrence of life and normativity are, at least prima facie, more likely on the assumption of theism than atheism, so the theist may have a probabilistic advantage relative to the atheist. Phases (a) and (b) together support the overall conclusion that the facts of pain as we find them in the world (including that there is any pain at all) are at least as great, if not greater, a challenge for the atheist as they are the theist.

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“…One reason involves ‘scope insensitivity’: tremendous numbers of individual animals suffer from predation, and it's difficult to imagine that our intuitions are in any way sensitive to the immense difference between, say, millions so suffering and trillions so suffering (cf. Crummett (2017), 80). Another is ‘status quo bias’: our tendency to evaluate the status quo more positively, whatever it happens to be.…”

Section: Dominionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More intuitively plausible would be the claim that sufficiently bad human suffering merits lexical priority. But it's extremely difficult to grant lexical priority to sufficiently bad human evils but not to trivial human evils for reasons explored in Crummett (2017, 80–83) and Case (2020). Assigning lexical priority of any sort will also generate problems in probabilistic cases (which all real cases are).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Human dominion and wild animal suffering

Crummett

2021

Rel. Stud.

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It may be possible, now or in the future, for humans to technologically intervene to reduce the amount of suffering experienced by wild animals. There is a debate about whether, if humans can do this, they should. Here, I consider the implications for this debate of the theological claim that humans have been granted dominion over the other animals. I argue that it's more plausible to interpret the dominion claim as granting humans (i) the responsibility to care for the well-being of individual animals than to interpret it as giving humans either (ii) the right to do whatever they want to other animals or (iii) the responsibility to care only for the well-being of aggregates of animals (such as whole species). I then show how this understanding of dominion undermines a range of arguments against intervening to reduce wild animal suffering. These arguments claim that humans do not stand in the right sort of relationship for intervention to be obligatory (or perhaps even permissible). But if we possess such dominion, we do stand in the right sort of relationship for it to be obligatory.

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The problem of evil and the suffering of creeping things

Cited by 9 publications

References 26 publications

Animal Suffering, God and Lessons from the Book of Job

Animal Suffering, God and Lessons from the Book of Job

The Evolution of Suffering, Epiphenomenalism, and the Phenomena of Life: Evidential Problems for Naturalists

Human dominion and wild animal suffering

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